


Not Quite a Nightmare

by iesika



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Ghost?, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:23:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iesika/pseuds/iesika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce's subconscious is a scary place. But you knew that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite a Nightmare

The dreams - he can't quite manage to call them nightmares - have some basis in reality.

Three nights after he'd brought Jason home, providing him with food and shelter and care and training and a freedom from fear, Bruce had awakened to a presence in his room. He'd recognized Jason's movements, his breathing, the faint scent of stale smoke and teenage boy, and let him stand there in the dark, thinking himself unnoticed... until the boy had climbed in to his bed, young and bare and far less tentative than he should have been. He never should have been there in the first place. Bruce had made sure he knew that, and sent him back to bed.

In the dreams, Bruce cannot speak. He cannot move. Jason comes to him, comes into his bed, crawling to straddle him, eager hands and mouth and a bright smile with sharp edges. His body is warm, welcoming, hungry. And Bruce's body... is a traitor. He tells his hands to push, and instead they caress, stroke, trace lovingly over the dense musculature that he put there, helpless to do anything but shake and gasp under too-talented hands, the wet heat of that mouth, the hot brand against his thigh, his stomach, his lips.

That isn't entirely true. Sometimes he can move. Sometimes he moves them both, rolling Jason to the mattress and taking, and hearing gasps of laughter, moans and curses of pleasure, feeling the tightness, the heat, the way Jason sucks him in, body and soul.

Those are the worst mornings.

When he wakes to cold and sticky sheets, shameful as any teenager - worse, because when Dick had started wanting to do his own laundry, Bruce had been able to assure him that what he was going through was perfectly healthy and natural. Jason had never expressed any concern or confusion over the matter. Bruce...

Bruce should have more control than this.

It's a very peculiar kind of haunting. Bruce isn't sure what it says about his psyche. He sits up studying until dawn after dawn and doesn't find an answer. Meditation doesn't help. Jason had been his son, and Bruce doesn't like this. He seeks distraction, works himself to exhaustion, tries sleeping more, sleeping less. Nothing helps.

 

Tonight - this morning - Alfred had given up and gone to bed before Bruce finally returned to the cave with bleary eyes and blood on his knuckles. He lets the pieces of his uniform lie where they fall, and sits at the computer with just a thick bathrobe to ward away the damp chill of the cave. He has trouble remembering the details, as he types his reports. Had the pimp's name been Mendola or Mendoza? How many shooters had there been at the bank robbery? Everything is a blur.

There are arms around his shoulders, warm and heavy. Bruce doesn't remember falling asleep, but there are gauntletted fingertips brushing the rough stubble on his chin. Bruce can smell blood and cordite and, very faintly, the scent of old tobacco.

"Looking kind of rough, B. You outta be in bed by now." Jason's voice in his ear manages to be both rough and playful, and it sends shivers down Bruce's spine. Jason's arms tighten into a hug that would be innocent if one of his hands wasn't snaking its way under Bruce's robe, hooked fingers stroking through the hair of his chest. The texture of the gloves is unbearably real, rubberized pads for climbing walls and gripping lines. Two of those fingers catch a nipple between them and tug, making Bruce gasp and come erect, neck craning back. Jason's breath on his cheek smells like very good coffee.

Bruce had thought the shock of the dreams was fading - as much as he fought them, they seemed to be a feature of his life, now, and he was....adjusting. Always before, though, Jason had come to his bed, come to him bare and shamelessly naked. This shock is new, visceral as the first, because those glittering eyes are masked, the torturing hands gloved. "Robin," Bruce gasps, and then he can't say anything else.

Jason's lips on his throat are as soft as his teeth are sharp. "I always wanted this," he says, murmuring the accusation against skin. He's said it before. "Always wanted. You never let me have it."

Bruce wants to protest, but the words won't leave his throat as anything but a moan. There is a difference between perceived obligation and desire. Jason had been a boy, a child in his care, and Bruce had never, ever wanted this.

Except that must be a lie, one he'd told even to himself, because Jason's arms slide loosely around Bruce's shoulders as he swings himself up and into Bruce's lap. His powerful legs, bare from even the faint modestly of his shorts, brace Bruce's thighs. He's wearing the tunic. He's even wearing the boots, the little bastard ghost, dream, memory, construct of Bruce's deepest, darkest imagination. His penis is erect, flushed rosy and beautiful, obscene, and he rubs it against the plush robe, humming happily, before untying the belt and brushing it aside.

Bruce's hands press against Jason's chest. He tries to push, but it does him no good; Jason leans into the touch, pushing back, shifting up and down as he rubs their bodies together. Bruce realizes that his palms rest over Jason's nipples - over the R insignia on his breast. His traitor hands burn like the rest of him.

The smooth, muscular curve and soft skin of Jason's buttocks against his thighs is a tease. The dragging slide of their erections, pressed together, pulls a moan from him. He can't even close his eyes against this, because Jason is smiling at him, his mouth dangerous, tongue darting out across his lips, and then they are kissing. Jason seems to have far too many teeth, and there is a faint trace of blood on his incisors when he pulls back to grin his triumph.

"I wanted this," he hisses. "Wanted you to want me, you stoic bastard. Wanted to make you. Hold you down, tie you up, make you see me. Know me."

I did, Bruce wants to protest, but. But. He'd doubted. To know Jason, really know him, would have meant there could be no doubt - one way or the other. He'd have been sure, and he still isn't, still doesn't know if the bird in his nest had been a cuckoo, a killer. He wants to argue, or maybe to ask, but all words, all thought leaves him as Jason rises, reaching back to guide him with one strong hand, and sinks slowly down.

The squeeze is unbearable. The heat. The feel of him. Bruce's voice leaves him with his doubts in one great shout, and he can't stop his hands from gripping Jason's hips, pulling their bodies together. There's no pause for adjustment, no troublesome reality, just Jason's arms around his neck and the rocking of his hips. Bruce thrusts up to meet him, and there's no need for gentleness, just bodies and grasping hands and tongues and teeth. Jason's mouth is hot and tastes like Alfred's coffee and stolen cigarettes.

He slides down in the chair knees spread wide for balance and leverage. Jason drives himself ruthlessly, growling and keening, deep in his throat, panting and gasping, cursing. Bruce can't close his eyes against him, as much as he tries. This is Jason, and no matter what form the dreams take....

Bruce knows, deep down, the reason he can't make the dreams stop. The chance to see Jason again, for even a moment, whatever the circumstances...

"Loved you," Jason pants, throwing his head back. "Jesus fucking - so much, Bruce. Always."

His eyes don't close, when he comes - or at least he doesn't think they do. He loses his sight to bright, hot whiteness, and he must have closed his eyes or -

He's alone. The cave is cold. He's a mess and there's no sound in the air but dripping water and rustling wings and his own breath, his heart beating. Slight hum of the computer. Blood in his veins. The air smells like damp and stone and sex.

Bruce is cold.

He wraps his robe around himself. It had fallen open, as he was dreaming. He cleans his chair with the edge of it and thinks, shamefully, about learning to do his own laundry.

He needs a shower. A hot one - hot as he can stand. He needs rest. He needs.

His mouth tastes like blood, and coffee he didn't drink.

He collects the pieces of his suit and goes back out again.


End file.
